TV News LIES

The UN humanitarian relief chief, Tom Fletcher, has sounded the alarm over rising violence in the occupied West Bank, where attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians and their property continue to escalate.

“Many of these attacks are linked to Palestinians’ attempts to harvest their olive crops,” he said in a statement on Tuesday.

“Palestinians have been killed and injured. Their homes and property damaged. Their livestock attacked.”

Mr. Fletcher said that more trees have been damaged, and more communities affected this year than in the previous six years combined.

“The failure to prevent or punish such attacks is inconsistent with international law,” he warned. “Palestinians must be protected. Impunity cannot prevail. Perpetrators must be held accountable.”

His remarks follow warnings from the UN Spokesperson’s Office last week that violence by Israeli settlers has surged across the West Bank, often under the watch of Israeli security forces.

More...

Until last week, Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi was the Israeli army’s top lawyer. Now she is behind bars and at the center of a scandal rocking the country after a bizarre sequence of events that included her abrupt resignation, a brief disappearance and a frantic search that led authorities to find her on a Tel Aviv beach.

The soap opera-worthy saga was touched off last week by Tomer-Yerushalmi’s explosive admission that she approved the leak of a surveillance video at the center of a politically divisive investigation into allegations of severe abuse against a Palestinian at a notorious Israeli military prison.

The video shows part of an assault in which Israeli soldiers are accused of sexually abusing a Palestinian detainee.

By leaking the video last year, Tomer-Yerushalmi aimed to expose the seriousness of the allegations her office was investigating. Instead, it triggered fierce criticism from Israel’s hard-line political leaders. After Tomer-Yerushalmi resigned under pressure last week, her critics continued to heave personal insults.

TVNL Comment:  This woman is being villified and hounded for validating the truth about the sexual torture of a Palestinian prisoner. Where is the rest of the legal community in Israel, or, Heaven forbid, the rest of the world?

More...

Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said that the Higher Planning Council will approve the construction of 1,973 new settlement units in the occupied West Bank during its next session.

He did not specify when the council will meet, Israeli Channel 12 reported.

The announcement came a day after Israel approved the building of 1,300 settler homes in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc south of occupied East Jerusalem.

Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said that the Higher Planning Council will approve the construction of 1,973 new settlement units in the occupied West Bank during its next session.

Smotrich said Israeli authorities have approved nearly 30,000 new settlement units in the occupied West Bank this year, describing it as an "unprecedented achievement" for his government.

The Palestinian group Hamas denounced the Israeli move as a "dangerous escalation in the policy of Judaisation and settlement expansion targeting Palestinian land deep inside the West Bank."

"These settlement plans constitute a blatant violation of international law and United Nations resolutions that criminalise settlement construction," it said in a statement.

More...

A jury on Wednesday convicted an Illinois sheriff’s deputy of second-degree murder, a lesser charge, in the shooting death of Sonya Massey, a Black woman who called 911 to report a suspected prowler.

Sean Grayson could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison or even probation. The jury did not convict him of first-degree murder, a crime that carries a sentence of 45 years to life.

Massey’s supporters were angered by the result. Her father, James Wilburn, called it a “miscarriage of justice.”

“She called for help and she was murdered in her own home. ... Second-degree murder — that is not right. That is not justice for anybody’s family,” Teresa Haley, a civil rights activist in Springfield, Illinois, told reporters outside the courthouse.

More...

Not only did U.S. Border Patrol boss Gregory Bovino show his face in a federal courtroom Tuesday, but he and a judge will be getting to know each other a lot better in the days to come.

That’s because U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis said she wants to meet with the Border Patrol’s commander-at-large every weeknight over the next seven days, as federal agents continue their aggressive deportation campaign that’s stretched from Little Village to Lake View.

Their daily meeting around 6 p.m. will give the judge a chance to speak with Bovino about the events of the day.

And as they do so, Ellis will have in her back pocket a request that she fully ban the feds from using tear gas amid the immigration blitz. The judge said Tuesday that, if agents continue to deploy gas, “they’d better be able to back it up.”

“And if they can’t,” she added, “then they will lose that as something they can use.”

Tuesday’s hearing revealed that Bovino has no body-worn camera — nor the training to use one. Bovino admitted that fact, even after telling the judge that 99% of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents here have that technology.

More...